14 DAY TRIAL // Solid state drives may have grown in popularity over the past year, thanks to their great speeds and high reliability, but their prices have still not exactly allowed them to even come close to becoming mainstream. Granted, Corsair definitely took a step forward, albeit temporarily, when he drove the price of the Nova to under 70, but the enterprise sector is still the main market for such devices right now. Eager to exploit this, Super Talent has come out and unleashed the ShuttleCraft line of SAS-connected 2.5-inch SSDs..
According to the company's official announcement, the series of SSDs contains, at present, four models, differentiated by their capacities and the type of NAND Flash chips employed in their construction. Two versions make use of more expensive SLC (single-level cell NAND chips) and have capacities of 60GB and 120GB, whereas the other two, which use affordable but less capable MLC (multi-level cell), come in 120GB and 240GB.
All four communicate with whatever computing machine they are placed in via the SAS (serial-attached SCSI) interface. Unfortunately, the company did not disclose the maximum read and write speeds that its newest offspring are capable of, nor did it mention which NAND Flash controller it implemented. The hardware maker did, on the other hand, mention advanced Wear Leveling, Bad block Management, Power Failure Management and Error Correction features.
“We at SuperTalent are committed to meeting the changing storage needs of our customers. With this, our first SAS interface solution we are now well poised to expand into the enterprise storage market,” declared Super Talent COO, C.H. Lee.
The 2.5-inch drives will become available in July from the Super Talent website. Unfortunately, end-users will have to, for now, live with not knowing the exact date or any sort of details regarding pricing or warranty schemes.